Astronomy Blog http://www.strudel.org.uk/blog/astro/ An astronomy blog usually (but not always) based in the UK. Pondering questions such as Is it a space probe or spacecraft ?. en-gb Tue, 16 Jun 2009 21:52:00 +0100 Tue, 16 Jun 2009 21:52:00 +0100 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss Marzipan (v0.6.2) Tweet Minister http://www.strudel.org.uk/blog/astro/000908.shtml Science Minister no less. The conversation started with a comment by Colin Stuart who was worried about Lord Drayson acquiring responsibility for the role of Defence Procurement as well as Science. Several other science twitterers chipped in and it became a rare example of direct interaction between Government and the public.

I've saved the entire conversation including the comments about Lord Drayson's racing team at Le Mans (Science, Defence Procurement and a racing team!) to show what was said and some of the context. - taken from Astronomy Blog (www.strudel.org.uk/blog/astro/)]]> Tue, 16 Jun 2009 21:52:00 +0100 http://www.strudel.org.uk/blog/astro/000908.shtml Things you won't find in space http://www.strudel.org.uk/blog/astro/000907.shtml LookUP service to make it easy to find specific astronomical objects. It won't find everything though.

One of the reasons an object isn't found is because the user didn't spell it correctly. To help with that, I've added a 'Did you mean?' option that will learn from successful searches and use those to suggest what you might have meant. This should improve over time. Another reason that a search fails is because the input wasn't something astronomical. Some recent examples include: books, coffee, Jesus, Freemasons, fish food, local news, God, and movies. None of these things were found in an astronomical context. Interestingly, these have all come from people using the iPhone application version. - taken from Astronomy Blog (www.strudel.org.uk/blog/astro/)]]> Mon, 08 Jun 2009 15:17:00 +0200 http://www.strudel.org.uk/blog/astro/000907.shtml Twitter MoonWatch http://www.strudel.org.uk/blog/astro/000906.shtml Newbury Astronomical Society are hosting a MoonWatch event live on Twitter. This virtual star party started at 21:30 BST and runs for another hour. The Moon is looking pretty good right now and amazingly there is a clear sky here in Manchester. As well as the Moon, Saturn can be seen a handspan away from it.

Below is a picture of the Moon taken with my cheap and cheerful digital camera pushed up against an eyepiece of my 10x50 binoculars. Not the best image in the world but you can make out some crater rims on the terminator.

Moon
The Moon imaged with a cheap digital camera looking through 10x50 binoculars. CREDIT: Stuart
- taken from Astronomy Blog (www.strudel.org.uk/blog/astro/)]]> Sat, 30 May 2009 22:43:00 +0100 http://www.strudel.org.uk/blog/astro/000906.shtml KAGUYA (SELENE) Impact http://www.strudel.org.uk/blog/astro/000905.shtml Tom reports (and so does Amir) that JAXA's KAGUYA (SELENE) spacecraft is planned to impact the Moon on June 10th at 18:30 GMT.

KAGUYA was launched in September 2007. Since then it has been mapping the Moon and sending back glorious HD video of Earthrise. It has exceeded its nominal mission and has been in an extended operational phase since February 2009. As the JAXA website says, the impact will "conclude its scientific mission to the Moon". Hopefully they'll be able to get some science out of those last seconds too.

Assuming that the time of impact doesn't change (it might), it looks as though KAGUYA will hit quite far south and on the dark side of the terminator. The final moments won't be visible in Europe, Africa or much of the Americas because we're on the wrong side of the planet at the time. If you live anywhere from India eastwards to Hawaii, however, you should get to see it. Hopefully Ian will get some pictures for the rest of us to see. - taken from Astronomy Blog (www.strudel.org.uk/blog/astro/)]]> Tue, 26 May 2009 22:35:00 +0100 http://www.strudel.org.uk/blog/astro/000905.shtml Hubble Release Video http://www.strudel.org.uk/blog/astro/000904.shtml 18th May the crew of the Space Shuttle Atlantis (STS-125) disconnected from the Hubble Space Telescope after a successful mission to upgrade the instruments and replace a few parts. This is the last servicing mission and it was most likely the final time that humans would be in close, physical contact with Hubble in space. This has been a very special mission for those of us who've grown up with Hubble over the past 19 years.

Of course, only the crew of STS-125 were lucky enough to be there in person. Other Hubble fans had to live vicariously through NASA TV. At the time of the parting I was hugely disappointed to find that there was no live video of the view. This momentuous event was shown via rather disappointing computer simulations and the reactions of the people in the control room at Goddard Space Flight Centre. GSFC employees are great but they don't really cut it compared to seeing the grand old space telescope for the last time.

After a few minutes of speculation on Twitter about the possibility of bad coverage by ground stations over Africa, or cover-up conspiracies, it turned out that the downlink antenna for sending video was being used in radar mode to track Hubble. That was pretty vital so I'll let NASA off on that.

Tonight, after a plea on Twitter for pictures, Alberto Conti (STSci) pointed me to an amazing video on YouTube. The video shows the view, from inside Atlantis, of the final minutes. You see the astronauts preparating for release, moving around in the Shuttle and filming the view out of the window of the Hubble slowly drifting away with the Earth behind. It is a stunning "home video" showing a fascinating perspective that I don't think I've seen before. It is well worth six or seven minutes of your time. - taken from Astronomy Blog (www.strudel.org.uk/blog/astro/)]]> Thu, 21 May 2009 22:47:00 +0100 http://www.strudel.org.uk/blog/astro/000904.shtml Finding the TARDIS http://www.strudel.org.uk/blog/astro/000903.shtml Whoniverse, the time machine used by The Doctor is named the TARDIS (Time And Relative Dimensions In Space). In a silly mood this afternoon, I decided to find it with my astronomical lookUP service. Imagine my surprise when it actually returned coordinates for TARDIS with the note that it was "in our solar system". What!?

It turns out that TARDIS is the official name assigned to asteroid 3325 which was discovered in 1984 at the Lowell Observatory in Arizona. Brilliant! - taken from Astronomy Blog (www.strudel.org.uk/blog/astro/)]]> Sun, 17 May 2009 19:42:00 +0100 http://www.strudel.org.uk/blog/astro/000903.shtml Launched! http://www.strudel.org.uk/blog/astro/000902.shtml full of astronomical space missions. There was the launch of STS-125 with the Hubble Space Telescope servicing mission (ongoing and can be watched on NASA TV); NASA's Kepler ended its calibration phase and started taking science data; and ESA's Planck and Herschel spacecraft were launched successfully.

The last of these missions was particularly nerve-racking for me as I have a personal involvement. Over the past three years I've helped a huge team of scientists and engineers with some of the calibration and characterisation of one of the two instruments onboard Planck. This has been a truly international effort and has been a great experience. I'm particularly thrilled to have handled some of the amplifiers that are now on their way to Lagrangian point L2.

Today, like many others, we had a party to follow the launch. We had background talks, ESA TV by satellite, and a big countdown display with ongoing text commentary. The launch, and our party, even made it onto the local news. As well as the TV feed, we set up a projection screen showing a stream of Herschel/Planck-related Twitter updates from people around the world. This display automatically updated every 30 seconds so that the 100 or so people at the party could dip in to what the world was saying. It was a nice way to connect our party with the rest of the world and was quite useful to look back at if you'd not quite heard what was said on ESA TV. Amongst the many hundreds of updates that scrolled by, I spotted some from @orbitingfrog, @govertschilling and @Nancy_A. Thanks to them for taking part in our party, even if they didn't realise that they were.

Launch Tweets
The live Twitter display during the Herschel and Planck launch with a local TV news camera in the foreground CREDIT: Mike Peel.

Of course, a successful launch is not the end of the hard work. There is now a three month period of instrument checking and calibration before the science can begin. It is going to be fun.

All the events this week have made the International Year of Astronomy slogan, "The Universe: Yours to Discover", feel particularly apt. - taken from Astronomy Blog (www.strudel.org.uk/blog/astro/)]]> Thu, 14 May 2009 21:03:00 +0100 http://www.strudel.org.uk/blog/astro/000902.shtml JENAM in video http://www.strudel.org.uk/blog/astro/000901.shtml
Astronomy Now were blogging from JENAM about everything from the SKA, to astroseismology, to the mini brainiacs. They also had a lot of video output including an interview with Mike Lockwood about the quiet Sun, Richard Bower talking about galaxies, and astronaut Michael Foale amongst others. The rival Sky At Night Magazine has dedicated Episode Thirteen (MP4: 97.5 MB so large download) of their video podcast to JENAM interviews about the Gliese 581 exoplanet system and the planned Extremely Large Telescope. Their video is hosted by Will. - taken from Astronomy Blog (www.strudel.org.uk/blog/astro/)]]> Tue, 12 May 2009 11:40:00 +0100 http://www.strudel.org.uk/blog/astro/000901.shtml